Dorothy Draper was one of the most successful interior designers of the 1930s and 40s with career credits that include West Virginia’s Greenbrier Resort, New York’s Carlyle Hotel, The Fairmont and Mark Hopkins in San Francisco — and the original interiors of The Gideon Putnam Hotel, where she also presided over a “refresh” of the hotel in 1953. Draper used bright, exuberant colors intended to relax and invigorate visitors in keeping with the overall mission of the Spa: the healing of bodies and spirits. She also used large prints that could encompass whole walls, incorporating black and white tiles, rococo scrollwork, and baroque plasterwork.
Though an important figure in the history of the hotel, much of Draper’s work and point of view had been lost in the sixty years since her last visit to Saratoga Springs. Upon our arrival in 2012, the most recent redecoration of the lobby – all brown leather sofas, loveseats, and club chairs – appeared to have been done by corporate remote control then accessorized locally with strange metal and fused glass items from HomeGoods (some still bearing price tags). The once poetic space of wingbacks, settees, and oriental carpets framed with columns, marble floors, and Palladian windows had been transformed into a men’s smoking lounge.
An extensive photographic record and vintage, hand-tinted postcards provided all the clues we needed to understand how the lobby had once appeared. We explored all the public and not-so-public areas of the hotel, flagging and tagging serviceable pieces that could be returned to the lobby – trading out for a few of them for the bulky leather pieces we wished to remove. Ultimately, we harvested and “re-purposed” enough pieces from various storage closets and offices — table lamps, vases, and other accessories — to restore a bit of Draper’s vision and, with virtually no budget, create a welcoming and sophisticated public space that had guests, journalists, and bloggers believing the hotel had just been remodeled – again.
